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The Chris Wallace Show

Donald Trump Likely to Win South Carolina Republican Presidential Primary against Nikki Haley; Former President Trump Compares His Legal Battles to Treatment of Russia Dissident Alexei Navalny; Biden Administration to Increase Sanctions against Russia after Death of Alexei Navalny; Alabama Supreme Court Ruling on Embryoes Used for IVF Potentially Harmful Politically to Republican Candidates. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired February 24, 2024 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:00:47]

CHRIS WALLACE, CNN ANCHOR: Hello again, and welcome. It's time to get together with some smart people to break down the big stories. Today, we're asking, with Nikki Haley vowing not to drop out no matter what happens today in South Carolina, are there good reasons she should stay in the race?

Then new sanctions against Russia following Alexei Navalny's death, but will Vladimir Putin even care?

And what does a tooth go for these days? Apparently not as much as it used to.

The band is all here and ready to go, so sit back, relax, and let's talk about it.

Up first, South Carolina Republicans are voting today in that state's GOP presidential primary. And while frontrunner Donald Trump says this should wrap up the rice, his top challenger says, she's just getting started.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

NIKKI HALEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm not going anywhere.

(APPLAUSE)

WALLACE: Nikki Haley's pledge this week.

HALEY: I'm campaigning every day until the last person votes.

WALLACE: Regardless of today's outcome in her home state of South Carolina.

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't think she knows how to get out. WALLACE: The Trump campaign telling reporters they're eying March 19th as the latest possible date Trump will have enough delegates to clinch the Republican nomination.

TRUMP: Our campaign is going to be over very quickly, very, very quick.

WALLACE: Which has the former president looking past Haley and calling on President Biden to start debating him as soon as possible.

TRUMP: I'll do it right now on your show. I'll challenge him right now.

WALLACE: But Trump isn't taking his base for granted, comparing his legal troubles to the political persecution of Alexei Navalny, who died in a Russian prison camp.

TRUMP: -- form of Navalny, it is a form of communism or fascism.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE (on camera): Here with me today, podcaster and author Kara Swisher, Reihan Salam, president of the Manhattan Institute and "National Review," contributing editor, "New York Times" journalist and podcast host Lulu Garcia-Navarro, and editor of "The Dispatch" and "Los Angeles Times" columnist Jonah Goldberg. Welcome back everyone.

Kara, why should Nikki Haley stay in the race?

KARA SWISHER, PODCAST HOST, "PIVOT" AND "ON": Why not? There's no downside for her now. She's already burned the boats with these statements she's been making. It's not like she's going to get to be vice president or a cabinet position. And for the future, it's better for her to be in and keep talking about the issues that matter to her, and also to create a contrast in case something happens. Again, as I said, it's a non-zero chance that something could happen. And so why not do it?

WALLACE: Yes, but if something did happen and we're talking about a conviction or a health event, isn't Nikki Haley the last person the MAGA base of this party would go for?

SWISHER: Perhaps, but I think it just raises her profile. There's nobody else. She can talk. She can get well-known. She gets interviewed. There's no downside here for her to do this, and she has the money.

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, JOURNALIST, "NEW YORK TIMES": I think there's a downside, and I'll tell you what it is. If you look at the latest poll, you see that now 36 percent of Republicans have a negative view of Nikki Haley as opposed to 34 percent that have a positive view. You're actually seeing the longer she campaigns, the less Republicans actually like her. And she's losing ground, not gaining ground. And so, and so if she wants to be the standard bearer of the Republican Party in its current incarnation, I think that's not really -- WALLACE: Let me bring in Reihan. Does Nikki Haley have a good reason

to stay in the race, even if she loses, as is expected she will by a large margin tonight in South Carolina, and even if she loses on Super Tuesday?

REIHAN SALAM, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, "NATIONAL REVIEW": I'd say that the best, strongest reason for her to stick around is to look to the experience of someone who's very different from Nikki Haley. That's Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. He was considered an absolute no hoper at the time, and he stuck in the race until July.

Now, Bernie Sanders was not ultimately the Democratic nominee. He didn't win in 2020. What he did do, however, is build a real movement within the Democratic Party. If Bernie Sanders hadn't run in 2016, for better, for worse, we wouldn't have Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

[10:05:00]

We wouldn't have a slew of self-described democratic socialists in the party pushing the party leftward, pushing even moderate, middle-class Joe Biden, far the left when it comes to his actual policy agenda. So the precedent here could be that Nikki Haley is actually trying to find that traditional conservative, Reagan Republican lane, and say that, wait a second. Right now, it's Trump who is the establishment within the party, and we represent a different direction. I'm not saying that's necessarily going to happen, but that's a pretty reasonable reason for her to stick around.

JONAH GOLDBERG, EDITOR IN CHIEF, "THE DISPATCH": I think Reihan's right, although I don't like the analogy to Bernie Sanders. I would make the analogy more to Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan ran in 76 and created a faction within the Republican Party that said, OK, it's our turn now. Nikki is setting herself up that even if she loses, which she almost certainly will, barring some deus ex machina, she's setting herself up at minimum to be able to say, I told you so.

And as someone who has very little concern about the Republican Party these days but does want a healthy right of center political party in this country, you need some check on Trump if he's going to be the nominee. And creating a faction within the party that is not associated, that is not automatically pro-Trump in every regard is a good thing for the country.

WALLACE: Then there's Trump's move to declare the race over by challenging President Biden to start debating now. But Trump skipped the GOP debates and Biden has dismissed Trump as someone outside political norms who tried to overturn the last election. Lulu, should Biden debate Trump?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yes. And I'm saying this as a journalist because I believe, and also as someone who believes in democracy. I think -- I've had a big problem with the fact that Trump has not wanted to participate in any but these GOP debates. I think it's been good for him. I think it's managed to actually sort of swell support and sort of places him as the frontrunner. But I want to see a healthy debate. I want these two people to come together and actually talk about the issues.

WALLACE: Would you say if he clinches the nomination by mid-March, start now or wait till Labor Day?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: No, I think he should wait. But let me just put a caveat here. I think Biden should debate Trump. I also think it's very important how he debates Trump. I think -- I would like to see, first of all, it'd be with the fact-based media. I would like to see someone like you, Chris, perhaps moderate it, perhaps someone like Kara, perhaps someone like me. I'm just saying.

The second thing I would like to see is that I'm not sure that I would like to have it be with the rabble-rousing public. And I mean this from the far left and the far right.

WALLACE: You mean those pesky voters.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Those pesky -- yes, but those pesky voters, they're not just -- if there were just regular voters, that's one thing. But what we're going to see now is perhaps agitators on both sides on the left, maybe people who are angry at Biden over the issue of Gaza. And on the right, maybe people who are very much pro-Trump.

WALLACE: Jonah, should the president of the United States share a stage with someone, an accord, that standing, that platform to someone who says he didn't lose the last election, it was stolen?

GOLDBERG: I don't -- I honestly don't know. I mean, there are two different questions here. One is, is it in Biden's political interest? And then that is predicated on the question of, is he physically up to doing it? I think there's good reason to believe his people don't think he is. If he wasn't willing to do a typically softball interview for the Super Bowl, they may have real concerns, rightly or wrong, that doing an hour-long debate with Donald Trump, he may not have the stamina for it, the cognitive condition to do it.

That said, I think the fact that Donald Trump didn't debate in the primaries and that Donald Trump has basically refused to concede the election and said the election was stolen, it gives him an excuse not to debate Trump that I think most of the Biden gettable voters would forgive.

SALAM: If Joe Biden doesn't participate in debates. That is a tell that Democrats are thinking hard about a plan b. If there were some kind of open primary, Ezra Klein, columnist for "The New York Times," Lulu's colleague, has floated this idea that, wait a second. If you have a new Democratic nominee emerge in the late summer, early fall, that's something that could really change the dynamic of the race. If --

SWISHER: I love that. That's a fantasy.

SALAM: -- are so, so deeply pessimistic about whether or not Biden can handle himself, the bar would be so low. If Biden agreed to take part in a debate and was basically sticking to his talking points more or less competently, that would be huge. SWISHER: This debate is going to happen. They're going to have a

debate. This is just -- and it's going to be after Labor Day, and Biden is still the candidate at this point. I know everybody loves all these different little scenarios, but that's where we are right now. And it seems that that's very good. Biden's actually been out and about a lot more lately, which is interesting. He's got to debate him. He can't refuse to debate him. It is a bad look if he doesn't. And he's got -- if I were him, I'd go with my come on, man, kind of attitude. Like come on, man, you're a liar, come on, man, you're crazy, and do that contrast.

[10:10:00]

SALAM: If he does it, that would be a big help.

SWISHER: Yes.

WALLACE: I want to just bring up one more question. Every Trump indictment, Jonah, has solidified Trump's support inside the Republican Party. But with the death of Navalny, Trump is now comparing his legal troubles to what Navalny went through in a Siberian prison. Question -- is the MAGA base got a by the Navalny comparison?

GOLDBERG: I think that people who have drank the Kool-Aid will, or they'll at least forgive it as they forgive all sorts of rhetorical excess from Trump. I will say that I'm pretty profoundly disgusted by the amen corner, amen choir that Trump has had with these comparisons. We have people like Newt Gingrich basically saying that we are morally equivalent to the Soviet Union or Putin's Russia. It's the kind of anti-Americanism that my crowd used to criticize of the left.

SALAM: I'm sorry to say, I think he has a point. I think that if you're a New Yorker right now, think about whether or not you have any conservative candidates in a blue state. What's going to happen to you thinking about the targeting. Or if you're a left-wing candidate in a red state. This is something that's going to set a dangerous precedent.

WALLACE: Well, I've got to say, the MAGA base likes grievance, though. It does sell.

Meanwhile, President Biden invoked new sanctions on Russia in response to Navalny's death. But given Vladimir Putin seems to do whatever he wants, will those sanctions even matter?

Then, new presidential rankings are our, and there are several surprises that have the panel and me fired up.

And later, help water. NASA's casting call for anyone who wants to live on fake Mars for an entire year.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:15:58] WALLACE: Retaliation for Navalny, the U.S. hitting Russia with tough new sanctions in response for the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and Russia's continued invasion of Ukraine which started two years ago today. It's the biggest sanctions package since the start of the war.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We can't walk away now.

WALLACE: The Biden administration hitting Russia with 500 new sanctions aimed at curbing Kremlin revenues and punishing those connected to Navalny's imprisonment.

BIDEN: We in the United States are going to continue ensure that Putin pays a price for his aggression abroad and repression at home.

WALLACE: Biden meeting with Navalny's daughter and widow this week as she vows to continue her husband's fight.

YULIA NAVALNAYA, WIDOW OF ALEXEI NAVALNY (through translator): Putin killed half of me, half of my heart, and half of my soul. But I still have the other half. And it tells me that I have no right to give up.

WALLACE: But Putin is as ruthless as ever ahead of the country's elections next month. Russian police detaining more than 400 people last weekend for publicly morning Navalny's death. Putin's regime also being blamed for the killing of a Russian pilot in Spain months after he defected to Ukraine by dramatically flying over the border in an attack helicopter.

And then there's the detention of a Russian American ballerina who donated $51 to a Ukrainian charity. Her boyfriend begging for her release.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I do believe that America will bring her back to me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Reihan, will Putin care about this latest round of sanctions?

SALAM: I don't believe so. He spent a decade-and-a-half hardening the Russian economy and making that economy robust against U.S. sanctions. And one thing that's frustrating for me, frankly, is the fact that we should have thrown everything we had at them at the beginning of this conflict, which, by the way, was way back in 2014, but certainly when they launched a new major invasion. I think that this has been handled rather poorly from the beginning by the Biden administration. And I think that this is too little, too late.

WALLACE: Well, it's interesting, the Biden administration announced it is moving to seize $700 million in Russian assets, which they hope at some point to transfer to Ukraine. But to Reihan's point, we could confiscate $300 billion of frozen Russian bank reserves, which raises the question, Lulu, couldn't the White House have done a lot more a lot earlier if they really wanted to get Putin's attention?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I think they could have, but I also think that sanctions are an imperfect mechanism to inflict pain on the Russian economy. I think what we're seeing at the moment is an administration that really is running out of options. They're not able to give Ukraine the funds that they need. We're seeing Ukraine really being pushed back in a serious way. There's a real concern that they might lose the war. Because I've covered conflicts for a long time, and what I will tell you is that you lose it inch by inch, and then you lose it all at once.

And we're in a very precarious situation right now, and I think what I would like to understand is what is the plan here? What is the plan to make sure that this aggression does not continue to go unchecked.

WALLACE: Before we pursue the aggression in Ukraine, I want to just follow up on the issue of Navalny, his widow. Yulia Navalnaya has been a profile encourage all week. Here she is right after her husband's death.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

YULIA NAVALNAYA, WIDOW OF ALEXEI NAVALNY (through translator): The most important thing we can do for Alexei and ourselves is to keep fighting harder, more desperately, and more fiercely than ever.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Kara, can Navalny's widow keep the resistance going?

SWISHER: Absolutely. And her daughter, too, who also met with Biden. Both -- I've met them briefly. Very impressive. And they have to keep doing it. I worry for their -- I worry for their safety, 100 percent. That's the first thing I thought of.

[10:20:08]

WALLACE: Well, let me say, when months after that Russian soldier after flight, they find them in Spain and they immediately kill -- of course, we don't know that it was the Russian, but we assume it is. There's a long reach.

SWISHER: Let me just say, because he said last week, Putin is a murderer. This is what he does. He goes around the globe and does this. He did it to Navalny. He tried to poison him. He eventually killed him in this prison. He will go after anyone who is, who is in any way protesting. He does it to people that are putting flowers down. This is a repressive regime run by a thug.

But I do think there is hope when people continue to speak out. You've seen it over and over again in history, whether it's Nelson Mandela or anybody else. There are moments where people do fight back. Russia is a tough place because of the grip that Putin has on this country.

WALLACE: But all of that assumes that there is a resistance that Yulia Navalnaya can mobilize. The fact is that after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, almost 15,000 protesters were detained and hundreds more rounded up this week, as Kara says, just for placing flowers, many of them, at places to commemorate Navalny. So is there --

GOLDBERG: It's more daunting than that, because there's also hundreds of thousands of Russians who left the country because they protested the war. So the seed stock for a domestic uprising of any kind --

WALLACE: How much of a difference could Navalnaya make?

GOLDBERG: Well look, Lulu mentioned Nelson Mandela. You can think of Vaclav Havel. There are lots of people who looked like they were making no progress whatsoever, but they were following Solzhenitsyn's rule of let the lie come into the world, but not through me. And by laying a moral foundation and being bold and having great forces come to their aid, at the end of their story, they actually had remarkable success. And you can't predict it. Lots of people who are heroic ended up dead. But she's doing what she should do. And the only thing you can hope for is that it has a galvanizing effect when a galvanizing effect can work.

WALLACE: I want to get now back to Ukraine, because they are suffering serious losses on the battlefield, just this week forced to pull back from the city of Avdiivka. And here's a Ukrainian soldier who was part of that retreat.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDRII TEREN, UKRAINIAN COMMANDER (through translator): We didn't have enough people. We didn't have enough shells. We didn't have enough possibilities to throw them back.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Lulu, you touched on this before. I want to get back to it now. Is Ukraine losing this war? And if so, how responsible are the Republicans, some Republicans in Congress, who are blocking any more security aid, military aid?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I mean, let me start with the second part of that, which is the Republicans are responsible at this moment for not doing what they should, for playing politics with aid that is very important. So that's the first thing. They bear the blame. I think there's no question about that.

The second part of this, is Ukraine losing the war? I mean, I think they're in great peril. They would say that they're in great peril. And one of the things that we know Putin wants is for the Ukrainians to come to the table, to perhaps negotiate some of their territory away. That is a nonstarter for the Ukrainians at this -- at this time. There's a real push here in this country among the Republicans to get some sort of a peace deal that might cede some of the territory to Putin.

The problem with all that is that what you are actually doing is saying, OK, it's OK that you invaded this country, and it's OK that you did this and killed so many people, and we're going to reward you with giving you some territory.

WALLACE: But Reihan, if you don't do that. And the question is, it seems that we've got a stalemate. They're moving in centimeters one way or the other, kind of like World War I, where they basically went for four years and the trenches and the front lines didn't move. So is Ukraine losing the war? Is just a slight shift in the stalemate? And what's the endgame here?

SALAM: Theres been a very positive development, which is the fact that Europe is to a much greater degree stepping up to aid Ukraine. Fundamentally, the problem is that the Biden administration has not established some clarity regarding its priorities, regarding how it's going to approach this conflict over the long term. I think that there actually was a deal to be made with many Republicans had you said, look, here are the priorities were setting, here are the things we know we need to focus on vis-a-vis China. And when it comes to Ukraine, F16s, A10s, F15s, there are variety of weapons systems that we are phasing out where we could have said we're going to provide that early. We're going to move those over --

GARCIA-NAVARRO: That sounds logical except for Trump.

SALAM: The Biden administration had an opportunity. They spent hundreds of billions of dollars in the Inflation Reduction Act that could have gone to rebuilding Americas munitions industrial base. That would have been a massive political win and a massive strategic win.

[10:25:01]

The problem right now is that in the short term you have some zero-sum element to this. We only have so many HIMARS.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Except for Trump, Reihan. Except for Trump. Except for Trump. You're saying all these things --

SALAM: It's not about anybody else. It's about the fact that munitions --

GARCIA-NAVARRO: The reason that the Republicans are not giving the money is because of Donald J. Trump.

SALAM: Our defense industrial base is barren, and we need to rebuild it. And the Biden administration has failed on that front.

WALLACE: All right, I'm glad we have settled this. We've got plenty of time to talk about the fight here in this room and the fight in Ukraine.

Coming up, we're sinking our teeth into an economic indicator apparently found under our kids' pillow. But first, four score and a couple of minutes from now, the new presidential rankings that have our first president dropping and the current commander-in-chief in a surprising position.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:30:04]

WALLACE: Who is our greatest president? This week scholars weighed in with their latest survey, ranking all 45 American presidents, rating Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and George Washington as the top three. By the way, the father of our country dropped one spot since last time.

As for our three most recent presidents, take a look at this. Barack Obama moved higher in the top ten to number seven, Joe Biden debuting on the lasted 14 ahead of Ronald Reagan and Woodrow Wilson, and Donald Trump rated dead last at 45. Jonah, is Trump really our worst president?

GOLDBERG: He might be the worst person to have been president. That's a debatable proposition. But it used to mean that we had the great, great man theory of history. Greatness didn't necessarily mean good, right? I mean, Hitler was "Time" magazine's man of the year. Stalin got a twice because there was this idea that --

WALLACE: Not just important. We're saying great.

GOLDBERG: Right, so but what does "great" mean? They don't really say in their study. If "great" means consequential, you can't put Trump dead last because he was a significant consequence to our politics. He put three Supreme Court justices on the court. Do I think he made America worse? Quite arguably. But the important -- the only point I want to make about this, these polls are incandescently stupid.

(LAUGHTER)

GOLDBERG: They do not tell us anything interesting about the presidents themselves. They tell us very interesting things about the people being polled. When you take a poll at CPAC or something like that, it doesn't say whether or not the policy they endorsed is correct. It tells you something interesting about the people responding to the poll. The fact that these political scientists think that Joe Biden is the 14th best president in American history tells you a lot about them and nothing about Joe Biden.

SWISHER: That really got to you, 14. No not 14, he's 12, or 16.

WALLACE: Kara, I want to pick up on that. Joe Biden at 14, two spots ahead of Ronald Reagan.

SWISHER: I would say Ronald Reagan was more consequential. You'd have to, whether you liked him or not, he was an important president, even just for tear down that wall. He did a lot of things, a lot of terrible things around AIDS and things like that. But nonetheless, very consequential president. And --

WALLACE: Incidentally, speaking of him, Ronald Reagan has dropped seven spots --

SWISHER: Ronald Reagan was an important president. He was important. He just was. There's just no way around it. GARCIA-NAVARRO: You know what they both agreed on, though? Because

they actually broke it down to like political persuasions. And they, and both Republicans -- both Republicans and Democrats agreed on Bill Clinton, which I thought was very funny.

GOLDBERG: Which is one of the biases in these things, recency bias --

SWISHER: I would have kept Washington at one. Washington is number one.

WALLACE: But there's actually not a lot of recency bias because there are some who have gone up and some who have gone down who are more recent. Which of all the rankings of the 45 ticks you off the most, Reihan.

SALAM: Oh, where to begin. The idea that Joe Biden three years --

SWISHER: Move off of Joe Biden, Reihan. Go with another president. There's 45 of them.

SALAM: I actually really do think that is recency bias. Barack Obama at number seven, Bill Clinton as high as he was. George H.W. Bush, not everyone's favorite Republican granted, but he was ranked in the 30s, someone who, in his one term, compared to Joe Biden, was just enormously consequential in having shepherded the end of the cold war. It's just --

SWISHER: Reihan, pick a dead one. I want to pick a dead one at some point.

GOLDBERG: James Polk deserves to be much higher.

SWISHER: OK, good.

WALLACE: OK. I mean, I do have to say this about Obama. I like Barack Obama fine, but to be number seven, up nine spots incidentally --

SWISHER: I would agree with that.

WALLACE: Since 2015 to bring him ahead of, to give you some dead president, Madison and Monroe. Lulu, who ticks you off?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I think this is like nerd prom. I mean, you know --

(LAUGHTER)

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I mean, with all --

WALLACE: That was the working name for this show at one point.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Nerd prom?

WALLACE: Yes.

(LAUGHTER) GARCIA-NAVARRO: OK. So yes, I'm just I'm just going to recuse myself because I'm just going to take a page from Jonah book and say that it is it is a little bit silly to have this debate. Ultimately, I couldn't rank them. Lincoln, Washington, and that's where I stop.

SALAM: And Washington being number three rather than number two. At a minimum --

WALLACE: How do you explain that? Is that recency bias, that Frankly D. Roosevelt replaced him?

SALAM: Well, look, I mean, he was the American Cincinnatus. He was the person responsible for independence. I mean, that's just --

GOLDBERG: Recency bias isn't the only bias. There's also an inherent in these polls, all for years going back 50 years, they've been doing these kinds of things. Presidents who expand the role of government get rated higher than presidents who mind their own business. Calvin Coolidge always ranks low because he doesn't do the things like FDR and Woodrow Wilson did of expanding the role of the administrative state, expanding the role of government. Political scientists like that stuff. George H.W. Bush, who managed to keep problems at bay, goes low. People who do big, consequential things that expand the role of the presidency --

[10:35:01]

GARCIA-NAVARRO: George H.W. Bush who keeps problems at bay as opposed to going into Kuwait and stuff. I mean, this is part of it -- listen, this is part of the whole problem --

WALLACE: So Lulu is engaged.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Of course, I'm engage. I just was like, well, you know. I mean, of course, I'm engaged. The problem with all of this is as follows. When we look at these figures, we don't actually look at the entirety of what they've done. And it is based on your own political persuasions that you would rate George H.W. Bush higher than perhaps a Bill Clinton.

SWISHER: Although, let me say with Washington, the reason he dropped is he is woke, obviously.

WALLACE: I love the fact that we all sit there and say, oh, this is crazy. And then --

SWISHER: Of course we love it. Of course we do.

WALLACE: Up next, I get by with a little help from my friends as they give their yea or nay on the Beatles coming to theaters. And it's taking the Fab Four on a long and winding road.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:40:10]

WALLACE: Once again, we want to get our group's yea or nay on some watercooler stories.

Up first, it's time to come together for four new Beatles movies now in the works, one biotech about each band member, John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Oscar winning director Sam Mendez is behind the project which should hit theaters in 2027. Reihan, don't let me down. Are you yea or nay on movies about each of the Beatles?

SALAM: I am yea for the Beatles cinematic universe if and only if Yoko Ono gets her own Disney Plus series. Genius conceptual artist, legend in her own time. Without Yoko no-go.

WALLACE: Are you being serious?

SALAM: I am being dead serious. Yoko is a legend.

WALLACE: Lulu?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I don't even know how to follow that. I'm at a loss for words today. Yes, I am -- I've never at a loss for words. Yea on all of them. I think that this is exciting. I love the Beatles, and it will introduce him to whole new generation.

WALLACE: All right, next, calling all wannabe Martians. NASA is looking for four volunteers to spend a year living and working inside a 1,700 square-foot Mars simulator. The mission to help the agency evaluate what systems the first men and women on Mars will need. Kara, are you yea or nay, on spending a year inside Mars Dune Alpha.

SWISHER: Would I do it? No. But I think it's important to do things like this. I've actually done a lot of reporting on this in interviews with biophysicists -- astrophysicists, not physicists -- biologists, astrobiologists, who tells you what happens. When you live on Mars, you have to be underground or else you become shorten and stupid, really pretty much.

WALLACE: Why?

SWISHER: The radiation, the gravity, everything. There's all kinds of effects on your body on that planet, on the red planet.

WALLACE: You don't have that much height to lose.

SWISHER: I'm going to let that one go. I'm going to let that one go. But it's -- I think it's important to do those things, because we have to -- I can't believe I'm parroting Elon Musk here, but we have to be a multi-planetary species. I would like Elon Musk to go to Mars and stay there and tell us what it's like. That would be great.

WALLACE: There you go. Jonah?

GOLDBERG: It's unanimous. I'm a yea. I want humanity to be an interplanetary species.

WALLACE: There you go.

Finally, and you might want to get your children out of the room for a minute, the Tooth Fairy is now paying less for your kids' pearly whites. The national average for a single tooth -- I love this graph -- dropped for the first time in five years to under six bucks. The group that tracks the tooth fairy, and yes, there is such a thing, says its likely do -- I knew it was going to go out -- it's likely due to high inflation and the tooth fairy being tapped out.

Lulu, are you yea or nay on tooth deflation? And what does a tooth go for in your house?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So a tooth costs in my house quite a lot. I actually saw this graph and was horrified that I've been overpaying and being extorted by my own child.

(LAUGHTER)

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And the worst part of this was --

WALLACE: Are you going to tell us what --

GARCIA-NAVARRO: We give like $10 to $20. I know. I know. But then but them let me explain. We were actually out of money, and this is how my daughter found out that the tooth fairy wasn't real, because it was a whole big thing. All of a sudden we didn't have the cash. The tooth fairy is, of course, real.

WALLACE: I don't know what you're talking about the tooth fairy is not real.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

WALLACE: Of course, the tooth fairy is real.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: The tooth fairy is real.

WALLACE: How dare you.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: But parents give an assist sometimes to the tooth fairy.

WALLACE: Reihan?

SALAM: I think this is a really good, healthy sign of parents banding together and saying when enough is enough. They ought to do that about smartphones and sure as heck should do this about teeth as well. You could get a perfectly good tooth from Bangladesh or a Cameroon or anywhere else for a heck of a lot less than five bucks. So globalization wins again. Let's get those teeth prices down, down, down.

WALLACE: I can't tell if he's kidding or not.

Speaking of paying up, one airline's money moves have gone under the radar and just might tick you off.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:48:28]

WALLACE: Under the radar this week, another increase in those annoying and ever-growing airline fees. American Airlines jacked up its baggage fees Tuesday by 33 percent to $40 for bags checked at the airport. Some airlines are expected to follow suit while others are pushing a competitive advantage.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Pack all the things. Stay even longer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: It has been going on for years, airlines introducing and then increasing fees on everything from bags to seat location to food and drinks. And other industries, like cell phone carriers, have noticed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Lunch?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That'll be $23.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Your ad says it's free.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is for our economy ultimate passengers who paid extra.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'll just have water.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK, cash or card?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: For water?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Lulu, are airline fees driving you crazy?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yes. This is absolutely outrageous. They're doing it for a reason, which is to jack up their bottom line. But you know who this hurts? It hurts the people who are trying to get cheap airflights and cheap tickets, because if you're flying first class, you're flying business class, or you have one of their credit cards with the really high rates, you get your bags for free. So it's really just the people who can't afford expensive tickets that this really hurts.

WALLACE: Reihan, is this just the free market at work?

SALAM: Well, look, you saw that Southwest is saying, I'm pivoting in this direction. Other airlines are pivoting in another direction.

[10:50:01]

American Airlines, Delta, these airlines have agreed to major concessions to their workers, to their baggage handlers, to their pilots. That has to come from somewhere, and they're making a bet that we're going to allow how some folks to pack light and some folks not to, and you're going to make that choice.

The alternative to this as jacking up the overall price of airfare. And I think that for a lot of folks, they think I want to be able to make the choice for which a la carte things I'm going to choose. I think this is a totally sensible and reasonable thing. And we're lucky that different airlines are experimenting with different approaches.

SWISHER: It's the workers' fault as usual, not the CEOs.

SALAM: I'm glad to have workers paid decently and therefore, I'm happy to pay yes seven extra bucks --

SWISHER: We're going to make you pay for oxygen.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: This is $45 for a --

GOLDBERG: -- Spirit Airlines, I asked for a soda and they looked at me like I was buying something from the prison commissary.

(LAUGHTER)

GOLDBERG: So like some of that stuff it does bother me. At the same time, I think Reihan's right. Look, profit margins for the airline industry are comparatively narrow for most industries, and the money has to come from somewhere if you're going to stay profitable. And being able to transport through the air at hundreds of miles an hour is actually a really great thing.

SWISHER: Magical.

GOLDBERG: It is kind of magical.

SWISHER: It is.

WALLACE: But Kara, I'm sure as someone who travels a lie --

SWISHER: I do.

WALLACE: -- you have figured out a way to outsmart the system?

SWISHER: Well, I fly a lot, so I get those free things all the time. I get free food, I get free bags and free everything, because I'm an important person.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And this is my point. For people who aren't important, or for people who are families, for example, who can't pack light, who can't just stuff everything in an overhead bag, it actually hurts them. Plus, I'll also say it slows down getting on the plane. Do you know why? Because everyone is shoving these ginormous carry-ons in the overhead bins and it takes forever. And so for all sorts of reasons, it has made flying less fun and less --

SALAM: -- a climate warrior, don't you want people flying a little bit less?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: This is not the question here.

SWISHER: Go fly in Europe. The rates are worse.

WALLACE: We're going to keep talking about this, but meanwhile, the panel is back with their best shots on some hot stories and a look at what will be in the news before its news. That's right after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:56:40]

WALLACE: It's time for our panel's hot takes on what's happening, or predictions of what we should be looking out for. So Lulu, hit me with your best shot.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I would like to RIP Bidens impeachment now. Can we actually bury this and please move on? We saw this week that one of the main, quote-unquote, whistleblowers who the impeachment was all built around --

WALLACE: An FBI informant.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: An FBI informant. And what has come out is that he has now been indicted for lying. And he has also said that a lot of the information that he had was possibly given to him by Russian intelligence. Now, he is clearly an inveterate liar. We don't know if that's true. But at this point, the entire house of cards that this was built on has collapsed. And so what I would really like to see is Congress move on from this risible, risible thing.

WALLACE: Very good use the word "risible."

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Thank you.

WALLACE: I'm impressed by that. I'll have to go look it up.

Reihan, you're taking a trip into pop culture this week.

SALAM: A very rare trip. "Saturday Night Live" has been irrelevant for decades, but I actually think that they have a shot --

WALLACE: We have ticked off so many people today.

SALAM: I'm sorry to say that, but they have --

WALLACE: I haven't watched it in 30 years.

SALAM: -- a shot at cultural relevance once again. They're having on Shane Gillis, a very popular comedian who, as it happens, a little backstory, he was brought on as a cast member for "SNL" back in 2016, and he was almost immediately bounced from the show because of some of his more offensive and edgy routines. The fact that they're bringing him back on to appeal to a different audience, to demonstrate that there or can be second acts when it comes to "SNL", I think it's a sign of maturity for the show and actually a sign of a larger change in our culture, a moving away from cancel culture, and an embrace of the fact that, look, comedy has got to speak to a lot of different audiences if it's going to be relevant.

WALLACE: Kara, best shot?

SWISHER: They had Trump as a host, by the way. They've done it before.

Best shot, the Alabama embryo decision I think is going to have real impact on the election and give Joe Biden -- the IVF decision to make embryos children. I think the abortion issue was starting to fade a little bit as a power thing, and now it's way back in the news, especially because only six percent of Americans are against IVF. Many people have been helped. This is about families and a mistake the hospital made indeed. But it's really something that's going to badly effect -- going to bring it back to, especially --

SALAM: Because briefly, what the Alabama Supreme Court said is that these frozen embryos are people, and therefore, if you dispose, as have frozen embryos, because oftentimes they harvest a bunch of them, that you could face all manner of charges.

SWISHER: Hospitals are stopping doing these in Alabama. This is going to hurt their economies. All these rulings are going to hurt economies of these states.

WALLACE: And I've got to say, Republicans from Donald Trump on down are running as far, as fast --

SWISHER: Far away. Mike Pence had a child conceived through IVF.

WALLACE: No, but they're running as far away from this Alabama decision as they can.

SWISHER: They can't run.

WALLACE: Jonah, bring us home. Well, that's a -- Donald Trump isn't wrong.

SWISHER: What, that he can run and hide from this? It's going to stick to him.

WALLACE: Jonah, bring us home.

GOLDBERG: So there's been a lot of talk about how Lara Trump, who Trump wants to put in as the co-chair of the RNC, as well as Chris LaCivita, I think is his name, who is going to be basically the day- to-day manager of the place, how they are going to orchestrate paying off Donald Trump's legal bills and have massive purges of the RNC. I think both of those things will not happen either at all or at least not until after Donald Trump is the nominee.

WALLACE: I just checked because I had an idea you were going to talk about this. They've already paid, PACs super PACs, everything, over $70 million in legal bills. It's an astonishing number, and it's only going to go up.

Gang, thank you all for being here, and thank you for spending part of your day with us. We'll see you right back here next week.